The success of a plant breeding program is linked with the rapid screening of crop germplasm. In the following study, the germination stage of rice seeds has been examined for the rapid screening of drought-tolerant genotypes. The rice genotypes (10 drought tolerant, 5 moderately drought tolerant, and 5 drought susceptible) were sown in Petri dishes under control and osmotic stress of 15 PEG6000. Data were recorded after four days of sowing for the osmotic stress-induced change in imbibition rate, speed of germination, radical and plumule length, radical and plumule total fresh and dry weight, proline contents, total antioxidant capacity, and malondialdehyde level in radical and plumule of seeds. Moreover, the change in expression of OsP5CS gene was also recorded in one of each drought tolerant, moderately drought tolerant, and drought susceptible genotypes. Under osmotic stress, the level of proline, total antioxidant capacity, and the expression of OsP5CS were increased in drought-tolerant genotypes as compared to moderately drought tolerant and drought susceptible genotypes. While, the change in imbibition rate, speed of germination, radical and plumule length, and fresh and dry weight were not symmetrical in drought tolerant, moderately drought tolerant, and drought susceptible genotypes. In short, the symmetrical change in proline, total antioxidant capacity, and expression of OsP5CS gene within radical and plumule of drought tolerant, moderately drought tolerant, and drought susceptible genotypes can help rapid screening of drought-tolerant rice genotypes.

To ensure a flawless working of a machine, fault diagnosis and condition monitoring is very critical. Talking about automobile industry, aviation industry, or robotics, mechanical inspection is essential. Bearing being one of the most important components in almost every mechanical system from spindle of a lathe to the wheel of an aircraft. So, health management of a bearing needs more attention than any other mechanical component. In this paper, a novel approach for signal processing using a hybrid of discrete wavelet transform (DWT) and empirical mode decomposition (EMD), for fault diagnosis of bearing has been proposed. In the first step, DWT is used to split the raw vibration signal into certain frequency sub-bands, and in the next step EMD is used to decompose the selected frequency band into a number of intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) and a residue. Afterwards, feature ranking and selection was performed using One-way ANOVA and Kruskal Wallis in MATLAB. Then for classification unit, support vector machine (SVM) and artificial neural network (ANN), techniques have been adopted. The results using the proposed strategy were quite satisfying. This concept can be used in future to inspect and predict a range of different faults including gear and rotor.

Gene mapping is a technique used to locate genes on a chromosome. It helps to determine the distance between genes and the molecular markers on chromosomes. This chapter explains in detail, the journey of gene mapping that starts with the experiments of Alfred Sturtevant (genetic mapping) and advancing under the knowledge of molecular markers, first-generation, next-generation, and third-generation sequencing techniques (physical mapping). The genera Gossypium includes 50 species which are rich sources of important genes for high yield, biotic and abiotic stress tolerance, and fiber quality. The position of these genes on chromosomes have been identified with the help of molecular markers including restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP), amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP), Simple sequence repeats (SSRs), expressed sequence tag (EST), randomly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD), etc. These molecular markers work on near-isogenic lines (NILs) and backcross populations to position the genes on chromosomes. With the help of these populations and molecular markers, the major genes controlling cotton yield, fiber quality, and stress tolerance have been positioned on A and D genomes.